The present invention relates in general to absorbing a dynamic shock of an explosion and pertains, more particularly, to a material for use in containers for explosive media and a material for use in containers for absorbing the dynamic shock of an explosion and prevent sympathetic detonation of adjacent explosive devices. The storage container and filler material of this invention is an improvement over the conventional explosive container.
With the conventional storage and transportation containers for explosive devices, such as grenades, safety is an important factor for the personnel and the storage magazine. The storage of large amounts of conventional munitions in centralized locations poses the possibility of sympathetic detonation and wide spread destruction, injury and possibly loss of life.
It is known that the explosion of one device or round (often referred to as a "donor explosion") among many in storage has the inevitable result of the propagation of a high-order detonation throughout the adjacent explosives, grenades, rounds, and the like and possibly throughout the entire magazine.
There are recognized drawbacks with many conventional materials. Materials such as rubber, plastic, or styrofoam-type are not usable, primarily due to the adverse thermal environment to which they would be subjected. Other possible materials include soils, ceramics, or asbestiform aluminosilicates. This latter material must be ruled out due to potential health hazards related to asbestos products.
Since soils tend to pack too closely they would not be expected to have the desired shock-absorbing properties of a more expanded product such as a ground or crushed rock material. Among the drawbacks associated with ceramics is the complicated procedure that would be expected to be involved in providing for air entrainment in the ceramic in order to produce a closed-cell ceramic foam. Thus, ground or crushed rock and particularly pumice became a preferred material.
Other crushed rock materials were considered, such as volcanic scoria. However, it is known that when scoria is used in a blast test with relatively large munitions it is not an adequate material by virtue of its relative lack of compressibility at relatively smaller particle sizes.